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[CountryBumkin]

I have four 3TB WD Red NAS (5400rpm) drives and four 3TB HGST Deskstar 7K3000 (7200rpm) drives. The are all the same capacity (3TB). I have an eight port hardware RAID controller.

Can I use these in the same array (either a RAID6 or a RAID10)?  I'm still trying to decide which RAID type would be best for me - assuming I can use the different brand drives in the same array.

Thanks.

[CountryBumkin]

To follow up on my post/question - After getting feedback from other forums, I've decided its not worth the risk to mix drives, so I'm going to stay with the same model/brand drives in each array. Since I have two controllers, I will just make two four-drive RAID6 arrays with the same drive models in each, and later expand these using more of the same drive models.

[millst]

I think it would work fine, but you'll take a performance hit. Whether that really matters for your usage scenario, I'll leave to you. I would not recommend buying a set of drives all at once from the same place since you are more likely to run into multiple drive failures at the same time.

Not sure what you heard elsewhere. It's a little old, but here's an article from Tom's, which I value over random opinions:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/HETEROGENEOUS-RAID-ARRAYS-WORK,1789.html

-tm

[CountryBumkin]

Thanks for that link. That was a good read.